Doctor Who_ History 101 - Mags L. Halliday [103]
‘This thing, this System, how much do you know about it?’ the Doctor asked.
‘We’re outcast from it, rejected. We don’t know much.’
They were already at the Plaça, the huge stone statues shuddering as the creature passed. It paused, all the eyes in all the faces darting, changing, looking about. It raised a huge arm, white and flickering between male and female, smooth and jagged. ‘That way.’
They started up the avenue. It was broad, lined with huge buildings. Unlike Las Rambles the traffic – what there was – raced along the centre lanes and the pedestrians walked down the wide side pavements. Almost immediately they passed a theatre, the masks above the doorway cruelly distorting as they laughed at them.
‘We think it was a communication system, a way of gathering and disseminating information.’
‘For whom?’
‘We’re not sure the Absolute knew. We think any knowledge he had is gone. His mind is not stable. For a while, Eric Blair was in full contact with him. There should not even be an identity for Enrique: he is not an individual, as we are.’
They were passing a long block of modernist buildings now. The carved Catalonian lizards on one chased each other around the pillars and rustled through the stone foliage as they went through the creature’s field. The metal eyes on the balconies of another opened, leaving blank holes which somehow followed them. Someone stood out watching the street screamed as the balustrade beneath his hands writhed and briefly caught on to them. The creature pointed to a sidestreet. ‘He’s gone that way.’
‘Good. I think we should get away from the more populated areas.’
‘Why?’
‘Well, erm. You do have a rather disruptive effect on how people perceive their reality. So Eric was in full contact? What happened?’
‘Enrique thought to control a human totally. Tried to eject Eric’s subjectivity, his ego, we suppose.’
They’d left the haphazard streets of the Barri Gótic behind now, instead being forced along the straight lines of the Eixample.
‘So what happened?’
‘With all Eric’s conscience gone, his amoral self rejected Enrique. Sent him back t– My apartment! My apartment is just here!’ A different face swirled and formed briefly, and the creature lurched up a side passage. Then it flung itself into the street. All form was lost: it roiled and rolled, surging into new shapes that melted and reformed. The Doctor stepped back as it tumbled closer to him, unwilling to touch whatever the creature was made up of. Then it was on the other side of the junction.
‘No! We must be unified on this!’ the Doctor heard what he thought to be Eric’s voice. The different personalities within it were fighting, he realised. One’s desire to get home, to get to safety trying to outweigh the ones who were trying to help him. He thought he saw Blair’s moustache briefly.
That was it!
‘That’s it!’ he shouted, running into the middle of the crossroads, approaching the creature as close as he dared. ‘Enrique has tried to take on Blair’s form! That’s who he reminded me of. Blair! Listen, it’s all connected. I need you and Enrique together. I need to get all of you back to your rightful minds to stop all this! Please! Be rational!’
Be rational? This mass of energy was hundreds of irrationalities bundled together and conflicting. But it was slowing, reforming almost. An arm emerged, large and pale, pointing eastwards.
‘That way?’ The Doctor started to jog along, sensing that he should hurry. ‘What’s this way?’
Then a vista opened briefly, as he looked down an avenue.
Huge fingers thrust skywards, ripping into the darkened sky as black outlines tore out of the midnight blue. The Doctor came to a stop, stared at them.
‘Of course,’ he breathed.